Gazette News
"Professional criminal" jailed for breaking into Windermere supermarket
8:53am Wednesday 22nd February 2012
A “PROFESSIONAL criminal” from Kendal has been jailed for more than two years for breaking into a Windermere supermarket.
Christopher Calvert, 24, crawled into the Booths store on his stomach after cutting through two doors which led into the area where the burglar alarm control panel was situated.
He tried to disable the alarm, Carlisle Crown Court heard, but hastily got out of the shop when he activated it by mistake.
He and another man ran off when the police saw them walking away from the store, but he was arrested after his DNA was found on a torch left at the scene.
Prosecutor Alan Lovett told the court Calvert had been noticed in the shop a few days before, behaving suspiciously and “taking an unusual interest” in the alarm system.
Calvert, of South Road, Kendal, had 96 previous convictions, including two – for breaking into Kendal’s Home Bargains store through the roof and trying to break into the Kendal branch of the Halifax building society from an alleyway – which earned him a two-year prison sentence in 2010.
On Tuesday Judge Paul Batty QC jailed him for another two years and three months after he pleaded guilty to burgling Booths with intent to steal.
The judge rejected defence barrister Greg Hoare’s submission that Calvert would have just filled two binbags with cigarettes so would not have stolen anything of very great value if he had completed the burglary.
“The potential value was enormous,” he said. “You don’t break into Booths at night for chicken feed. This was a determined attack committed at dead of night.”
Passing sentence, the judge told Calvert: “You are a professional criminal – a professional burglar.”
He said the offence was made more serious not just by the value of items that could have been taken but also by the way Calvert had taken tools to cut through the doors and disable the alarm.